Though the mills of politics grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small.

For the past five or six years the political winds, or the political pendulum if you will, has begun to swing back from Reagan era conservatism and trickle-down economics towards American populism and Jeffersonian democracy. This shift has not occurred among politicians, or the corporate media talking heads, but at the grassroots level of American politics. We the people.

Perhaps it required an unprecedented, and unconstitutional wake-up call from the likes of Bush and Cheney to alert the American electorate to the dangers posed by a government whose checks and balances have been thwarted by the executive branch. Just maybe, the Bush and Cheney administration’s blatant malfeasance is exactly the tonic that a somnolescent American public needed to stir them to political action.

When you hear politicians talk about change, listen carefully to what they say next, when they try to explain what precisely they mean by change. If that recipe for change does not include a serious challenge to the current corporate mentality that puts profits above people, economy above equality, and corporations above the law, then it may not be the type of change you had in mind.

Political movements don’t happen in a moment, even if heads are lost at the gallows. The Republicans worked slowly over the last 3 decades, step by step, to take the Congress and White House. The Democrats can’t expect to move the political pendulum faster than it can naturally go. Political mills grind slowly, but in the end, they produce the results that the majority dictates. Be part of the progressive political mill, and help the progressive majority grow. Once Democrats have control, then the political mill can begin to work on them to move the agenda to the left.

Political change doesn’t move like a bullet train, it grinds like a mill, seeming at times exceeding slow.

John R. Moffett PhD is a research neuroscientist in the Washington, DC area. Dr. Moffett's main area of research focuses on the brain metabolite N-acetylaspartate, and an associated genetic disorder known as Canavan disease.